Dedede Meets Saint Paul
by gzorat
Summary: In this story, Saint Paul discusses the New Testament with King Dedede. Rated M for a couple of really gross anecdotes.


Dedede Meets Saint Paul

All was grim in the chamber of King Dedede; a terrible despondency had befallen the once-proud monarch. No longer did his face shine with a warm and radiant glow. No longer did he stride elegantly in silken robes before his adoring subjects. No longer could he muster the strength to shatter the earth with a blow from his mighty mallet. All he could do was sit on the throne and stare dimly ahead. All manner of evil rumor flew about the court, and Snagglepuff, a Waddle Dee of exceptional girth and ambition, saw this as an opportunity to seize the throne for himself.

King Dedede could not understand why he felt so terrible. Certainly, he had anything a penguin king could ask for. He could buy anything he wanted with money from the treasury, and suffered from no lack of earthly comfort. Moreover, his rule was successful by any measure. The star harvest had been bountiful, the peasants were content, and no kingdom in all the land could challenge the might of Popstar's army.

Snagglepuff, sensing an opportunity, approached his king and said, "My liege, my wise and mighty ruler, I see that you are unwell. Let's grab a prisoner from the dungeon and feed him to a wild Fire Lion in the Colosseum. It will be a glorious spectacle, and will certainly lift your spirits" This he proposed not because he expected his king to enjoy it, but rather because his goal was to slander the monarch by making him look like a bloodthirsty tyrant. Dedede meekly assented, not because he truly desired such a thing, but because he lacked the strength to argue.

Snagglepuff thought to himself, _I'll make sure that they pick the weakest, most helpless prisoner. That way, King Dedede will look exceptionally cruel and unfair. _He petitioned the dungeon master to bring him Paul, a ragged mendicant who had been arrested for disturbing the peace. Paul was of a species nonnative to Popstar, and subsequently ill-suited to survival on the colorful planet. Of course, he was subsequently ill-suited to survive a confrontation with a Fire Lion.

Minutes later, Paul appeared, escorted by a pair of bulky Sword Knights. Shackles bound his hands only; further constraint was unnecessary, as he had never shown resistance. The Sword Knights brought him before Snagglepuff and Dedede.

Snagglepuff exclaimed, "Prisoner, kneel before your king, who has sentenced you to die today. By his decree, you will be burned alive and eaten by a giant Fire Lion. Have you any words for those who shall bear witness to this spectacle?"

Snagglepuff was hoping that the prisoner would make a pathetic and impassioned plea for his life, thus creating a scene that would make the king look bad in the eyes of the public.

But Paul did nothing of the sort. Rather, he looked at Dedede in the eyes and said, "Brother, why do you choose to suffer so?"

The king said nothing, but an attentive member of the audience might have detected a faint glint in his eye.

Paul continued, "You know, you remind me of someone. A certain young woman was having her period, and discovered to her horror that she had run out of tampons. She searched frantically about the house for a rag to staunch the flow. At last she found one. Little did she know that it was her brother's come rag, and that it still contained viable sperm. Thus she got pregnant, and unwittingly gave birth to her brother's child."

For the first time in quite a while, Dedede was motivated to speak. The anecdote had clicked some switch in his brain, triggering interest in the old man's words. So unexpected was the old man's statement that he had to say something. "I don't understand—how do I remind you of her?" he asked. It was the most substantial utterance he had made all week.

Paul smiled and replied, "The world of Man is gross and obscene—and pathetic and silly. And ugly and cruel. And also dirty, low, and vile. And you suffer because you choose to abide by its standards—by its means and mores, by its concepts and idea, by the limitations it imposes on the mind. That lady committed no conscious error, but suffered because of the nature of the world.

Now let me tell you of another victim of the world, this one more at fault for his suffering. A certain man sold his soul to the Devil for a bigger dick. He performed a candle-lit ritual that he found on some web site. Then he measured himself and found no change. This made him disappointed, but he got over it. However, a week later, he got a envelope in the mail containing a ticket for a free operation at a shady clinic at the other side of town. He went, got the operation, and left content. It's a shame he didn't think to look up how penis-lengthening operations work, or he wouldn't have been so happy when he left the clinic. You see, they lengthen penises by slicing off a ligament and sticking on the the top, making it longer but less stable. This causes impotence, among other things. Thus, when the guy went to celebrate his questionable achievement with the services of a prostitute, he discovered that it was no longer of any use to him. Thus, he ended up considerably worse than he started."

Although Snagglepuff could not understand the relation between Paul's anecdotes and the situation with the king, he recognized that it was not in his best interest for the prisoner to continue. "That's enough!" he exclaimed. "It's about time for something to eat you!"

At once Dedede, with greater vigor than he had shown for some time, burst out, "No! Please go on!"

And Paul did go on. He continued, "There was once a certain social club for wealthy persons. Once a month, a small circle of prestigious individuals met to discuss the issues of the day. One particularly remarkable participant was a lady in a gaudy fur coat, who spoke with a sharp British accent and used every opportunity to spout the harshest imaginable invective for the poor and disadvantaged. 'We need to kill all the damned parasites,' she would say. 'The subhuman filth are clogging all the dumpsters and dirtying the streets.'

The last meeting she attended was in December. When they reconvened in January, she was conspicuously absent. She didn't show up in February or March, either. Another member of the club, curious about what had happened to her, decided to investigate. After a week of making inquiries, he made a shocking discovery: the mysterious woman had frozen to death on Christmas Day. It turned out that she was a homeless woman who had been acting out a fantasy with an imitation fur coat that she had found in a dumpster.

This, brothers, is our world. Every achievement, every victory, every success to which we may lay claim is earned within it. All measures of worldly fulfillment are obscene, or at best unimportant, in the eyes of God. If you allow this world to tell you what you should want, then the things you seek will be defined by the most perverse possible source. But if you reject the standards of this world, you stand to escape its rot and degradation." With this, Paul paused and looked at King Dedede.

The king looked back. Strangely energized by the prisoner's monologue, he opened his mouth to speak, but could not think of anything to say. After a moment, he said, "Sir, you speak of the deficiencies of 'this world,' but I do not understand. What alternative is there to 'this world?"

"I shall explain. 'This world' is an imaginary construct, a lie created by our sensory perception and propagated via our flawed language. All that you see and hear, all that you touch and feel, all that you say and is said to you—none of this carries any true significance, yet in our natural condition, we are slaves to the delusions of the flesh.

The alternative to this world—the world of the flesh—is the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit, one is elevated above the foolish delusions that drive us to suffering and wickedness. The Spirit is all that is not confined to the flesh. It is all that is righteous, pure, and uncorrupted. It is un-lust; it is un-hunger; it is un-sin; it is the reverse of all things for which we are naturally inclined to compromise ourselves.

Long ago, Jesus Christ—The Anointed One—was sent by God to reveal how we may come to know the Holy Spirit. He explained that the fruits of life are a foolish deception, appearing succulent but being bland or rotten within. One could be 'saved' from falling victim to them only through the Spirit, and that adherence to religious law alone would not suffice. He explained to his countrymen that their religious law was laudable but incomplete, and would remain incomplete to all except those who could understand the logic inherent to it. It is one thing to adhere to the law, and quite another to understand it. Now, Hebrew law was certainly holy and divine: since God made the desert, the rules and customs necessary for survival in the desert must logically be divine as well. Moreover, by adhering faithfully to the law, one is necessarily drawn from the mundane, and as one leaves the mundane, he or she will move closer to the Spirit. Therefore, to some extent salvation from the world is possible through adherence to the law.

However, no law can be considered perfect so long as it is transcribed in human language and interpreted by corrupt human minds. It is hard enough to translate from one human language to another, so imagine how many times harder it should be to translate from the language of God into a language of Man! Therefore, no one can be saved by adherence to the law alone. Indeed, the law is subject to all manner of loopholes and inadequacies.  
Because of this, it was necessary for Christ to set an example and show how one can be saved, with or without adherence to ancient Hebrew religious law. He renounced worldly things, never engaged in wickedness, and refused to compromise himself even at the expense of his life. He became an everlasting icon of salvation; his life and actions, a template and path to follow. He was perfect in the Spirit, and by using the mind to follow his example one may be saved from the world's deceit.

Thus I tell you: abandon your never-ending quest for the fruits of life-which you consume every day without fulfillment-and seek instead the fruits of the Spirit. Truly, it is better to die in the gutter, broken and dirty, having tasted the fruits of the Spirit once, than to reign a thousand years in luxury, feasting every day on the fruits of life."

King Dedede did not respond, but only reclined in his throne, deep in thought. He wanted to respond to Paul's monologue, but could think of no response. Paul—just who was this mysterious prisoner? And why did his claims resonate so well with him?

Suddenly Snagglepuff broke the silence. "Enough!" he snapped, visibly shaken. "This senseless moralizing has gone on long enough! Dedede, what are you waiting for?"

It was not Dedede who responded, but Paul. "Really? Moralizing?" he asked, chuckling. "I don't recall having claimed the slightest measure of superiority over either of you.

Indeed, I will share with you the nature of moralization. Imagine that we have two criminals, a robber and a con artist. The robber considers himself superior because he his honest about what he does, and the con artist considers himself superior because he doesn't resort to violence. But which of these is really better than the other? I posit that neither is, and that both are simply deluding themselves by drawing a line between right and wrong that they would never cross for reasons wholly irrelevant to their genuine moral convictions. The robber won't resort to trickery because he's not smart enough to cook up a good scam, and the con artist is too physically weak to pull off a successful robbery. What a coincidence it is, then, that they consider the worst behavior to be what they had no chance of doing anyway!

The Holy Spirit is the means of escape from the wickedness of Man, and in no way a mechanism for asserting one's perceived moral superiority. Indeed, central to Christ's teachings is the directive to withhold judgment over others. Do you know why? I promise you, he said it for a good reason! He wasn't just saying it to be nice. There is an excellent logical justification for this. The justification is simple: the world, as it is, is such that people cannot expect to survive without compromising themselves in the eyes of God.

Yes, I tell you that all of what we call sin is fundamentally the expression of man's survival instincts. In order to survive in the world as it is, one must either sin directly or somehow enable those who do. One man may need to steal to eat; his sin comes directly from his will to survive. Another may engage in seemingly needless wickedness because his experiences have convinced him that he must harden his heart; thus, his sin also comes from his will to survive. And still others may do nothing that is obviously wrong, but owe their untroubled existence to the sins of others. For example, if we make an honest living, but use currency kept artificially stable via large-scale fraud, violence, and manipulation, then we cannot say that we have severed our ties to sin. If we aren't in the mafia, we are at least paying it protection money. For this reason, we should not judge others for what they feel they must do to survive.

I will reiterate that even if the means of our survival are seemingly more wholesome than those of our neighbor, it does not follow that we would maintain our apparent moral superiority under a different set of circumstances. And even if we would maintain that superiority, we cannot determine where that neighbor is morally inferior and where he has simply miscalculated. In order to determine who is objectively better and who is objectively worse, one would need Godlike omniscience to analyze every single possible variable (ahem). In addition, we may be stuck between one sin and another: it is sinful to kill to feed one's kin, and no less sinful still to let them starve.

Therefore, please do not accuse me of moralizing! Indeed, I tell you that no man is worthy of judging any other. I am not here to speak of men, but of the Spirit. It is only through the Spirit that one can escape from the corruption into which we are born. The Spirit is manifested in all that redeems and mitigates, soothes and mends, relieves and liberates."

Neither Dedede nor Snagglepuff responded to Paul's statement, but one could tell from their expressions that his words had had a profound effect. Snagglepuff's face was contorted into a hideous grimace, but Dedede was looking at Paul with hope and admiration.

The room was not silent for long. Snagglepuff, his composure regained, said, "Paul! What you've been telling us is very nice, but aren't you forgetting something? Where's your material evidence? You speak of God and the Holy Spirit, whom I haven't seen, and of Jesus Christ, whom I also haven't seen. Where are they? Show them to me! Truly, _I _tell _you_ that your claims are meaningless without solid proof!"

Snagglepuff's words had an effect on King Dedede. "Paul, I want to believe what you have to say, but Snagglepuff is right," he said. "Where is your proof of this? How can you be so confident? Don't you have even the smallest bit of doubt? Why should I believe you?"

To all of this Paul only chuckled. "Why would I doubt? Logically, my statements cannot possibly be false."

This puzzled King Dedede a great deal. "Umm . . . how?" he asked.

"Allow me to ask you something. _Tanya urodliva_. Is that statement true or false?"

Dedede scratched his head. "I have no idea," he said. "I don't know what those words mean."

"That's a very good point. You cannot evaluate this statement until you assign value to these two words. Depending on which meanings you assign to which words, the statement could mean anything at all. Until a precise definition can be determined, you have no way of evaluating what was said. And it is impossible for the mind to produce a truly precise definition of anything. The slightest semantic nuance can radically change the meaning of an utterance. And there aren't enough neurons in the human brain for Godlike objectivity. The accuracy of my statement thus depends as much on you as it does on anything else.

By the way, I chose that expression for a reason. The expression is pronounced exactly the same way in Russian and Ukrainian, but its meaning differs between languages. In Russian, one is claiming that someone named Tanya is ugly; in Ukrainian, that she is beautiful. By themselves, the words in this statement have no precise meaning. Meaning cannot be determined until you determine which language the expression is in—and what if no one tells you? And even once you decide on that, the statement's accuracy is still up to you, as any given word can have any number of individualized, personal definitions.

In other words, it is your mind—and your mind alone—that determines the accuracy of any given statement. No one questions the accuracy of the image produced by his or her eyes, but this image is by no means an objective depiction of the world before them. The nature of the image produced varies enormously from person to person, and species to species. The same can be said of the images and conceptualizations produced by the mind.

Now, let me state explicitly address Snagglepuff's request for material proof. Simply put, you have it all around you. Every single statement I have made has at least one mode of understanding that is consistent with the world as it is and as you perceive it. Whether or not you obtain that understanding is up to you. For any given statement, you can choose to approach it with wisdom and discernment, or insist upon such a narrow interpretation that you do not allow it to be true under any circumstances. For this reason I tell you that for my claims to be valid, all I must prove is something that should be readily obvious—that one's sensory perception accords undue value to the so-called 'fruits of life.'"

"But that's not true!" yelled Snagglepuff. "The natural sciences have disproved all these silly superstitions! String theory and mass spectrometry constitute incontrovertible proof that there are no higher powers, and consequently that one would be foolish to concern himself with matters beyond his immediate bodily impulses!"

Paul again was unfazed. He replied, "I do not at all endorse the doctrine of positivistic materialism—really, I don't—but let's assume, for your sake, that virtually any given thing—material or immaterial—can be explained in the erudite nomenclature of the day. What does this 'explaining' actually entail? What you call an explanation does not change a single characteristic of what one would describe. All you are doing is making a certain aspect of it intelligible in a slightly different way. There is no difference between a lamp and a corded apparatus attached to a bulb, other than the difference that one chooses to create in his or her own mind.

Again I will provide an example. A common claim of those seeking to refute Scripture is that modern biology contradicts the narrative of the book of Genesis, and therefore everything printed in Scripture is false. But where does the contradiction lie? Is it in reality or in one's imagination? I would not call it sensible to say, 'There was no vast primeval expanse in which our ancestors wandered in blissful ignorance of the nature of sin. There was no 'tree of knowledge' that granted them the ability to fashion tools and discern right from wrong. And women were not punished for this discovery by being given sharper birthing pains. Rather, our ancestors wandered about the jungles of Africa. They eventually developed the mental capacity to create clothing, fashion tools, and build settlements. The new cognitive faculties also led to the development of moral values, and the increased cranium size made childbirth more painful.'"

With this final statement, Paul fell silent. Snagglepuff was quiet as well, although he did produce some noise by gritting his teeth in frustration. None of the courtiers present saw fit to chime in, either. Dedede, however, was finally ready to speak at length.

The great king of Popstar rose from his throne, cured at last of his frightful lethargy. Standing tall, he reminded all present of his regal stature. His voice bellowing, he declared, "Brother Paul, I cannot commend you enough for the great service you have provided us today. At long last, I see what I was missing. I had reached the top, obtained all the things that my flesh demanded, but no amount of worldly success could satisfy me. The more I got, the more I wanted. I compromised myself in countless ways, and never received more pleasure than I caused misery. On a subconscious level I realized the futility of my actions, but had not yet known of an alternative. Thus I fell into a terrible stupor.

However, I have now seen the light. All this time, I thought I was surrounded by glory and splendor. Yet the Spirit tells me that I was deceived, that I was really surrounded by sleaze and filth. I might as well have been a drug dealer or a pimp. And if a king cannot escape the mire, then who can? Truly no one, can, except through the Spirit.

Therefore, I no longer wish to compromise myself by committing those sins which are necessary for running the government. I hereby abdicate the throne and appoint Snagglepuff our new king. I will rend my clothes and walk barefoot. I will forswear all manner of delicacy and material temptation. I will abstain from all romantic pursuits, so as not to burden myself with responsibilities outside of the Holy Spirit."

Thus, Paul was freed at Dedede's request. Together they left the castle—outwardly ragged, but inwardly prospering—to spread the word of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Snagglepuff was handed the crown and coronated that very day. An adviser suggested sending someone to track them down and eliminate them, but the new king uncharacteristically refused...


End file.
